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For now, the question about future sea level change in the Mediterranean remains a challenge. Previous climate modelling attempts to estimate future sea level change in the Mediterranean did not meet a consensus. The low resolution of CMIP-type models prevents an accurate representation of important small scales processes acting over the Mediterranean region. For this reason among others, the use of high resolution regional ocean modelling has been recommended in literature to address the question of ongoing and future Mediterranean sea level change in response to climate change or greenhouse gases emissions. Also, it has been shown that east Atlantic sea level variability is the dominant driver of the Mediterranean variability at interannual and interdecadal scales. However, up to now, long-term regional simulations of the Mediterranean Sea do not integrate the full sea level information from the Atlantic, which is a substantial shortcoming when analysing Mediterranean sea level response. In the present study we analyse different approaches followed by state-of-the-art regional climate models to simulate Mediterranean sea level variability. Additionally we present a new simulation which incorporates improved information of Atlantic sea level forcing at the lateral boundary. We evaluate the skills of the different simulations in the frame of long-term hindcast simulations spanning from 1980 to 2012 analysing sea level variability from seasonal to multidecadal scales. Results from the new simulation show a substantial improvement in the modelled Mediterranean sea level signal. This confirms that Mediterranean mean sea level is strongly influenced by the Atlantic conditions, and thus suggests that the quality of the information in the lateral boundary conditions (LBCs) is crucial for the good modelling of Mediterranean sea level. We also found that the regional differences inside the basin, that are induced by circulation changes, are model-dependent and thus not affected by the LBCs. Finally, we argue that a correct configuration of LBCs in the Atlantic should be used for future Mediterranean simulations, which cover hindcast period, but also for scenarios.

Characterizing and understanding the basic functioning of the Mediterranean Sea in terms of heat and salt redistribution within the basin is a crucial issue to predict its evolution. Here we quantify and analyze the heat and salt transfers using a simple box model consisting of four layers in the vertical for each of the two (western and eastern) basins. Namely, we box-average 14 regional simulations of the Med-CORDEX ensemble plus a regional and a global reanalysis, computing for each of them the heat and salt exchanges between layers. First, we analyze in detail the mechanisms behind heat and salt redistribution at different time scales from the outputs of a single simulation (NEMOMED8). We show that in the western basin the transfer between layer 1 (0–150 m) and layer 2 (150–600 m) is upwards for most models both for heat and salt, while in the eastern basin both transfers are downwards. A feature common to both basins is that the transports are smaller in summer than in winter due to the enhanced stratification, which dampen the mixing between layers. From the comparison of the 16 simulations we observe that the spread between models is much larger than the ensemble average for the salt transfer and for the heat transfer between layer 1 and layer 2. At lower layers (below 600 m) there is a set of models showing a good agreement between them, while others are not correlated with any other. The mechanisms behind the ensemble spread are not straightforward. First, to have a coarse resolution prevents the model to correctly represent the heat and salt redistribution in the basin. Second, those models with a very different initial stratification also show a very different redistribution, especially at intermediate and deep layers. Finally, the assimilation of data seems to perturb the heat and salt redistribution. Besides this, the differences among regional models that share similar spatial resolution and initial conditions are induced by more subtle mechanisms which depend on the variable and process analyzed. In order to reduce the uncertainties in the Mediterranean regional climate projections further modelling studies and better observational datasets are needed to constrain the main sources of discrepancies among models. In the absence of those, an ensemble modelling approach as the one followed in the Med-CORDEX initiative seems to be the best solution to evaluate model uncertainties into the future climate projections.

The Mediterranean climate is expected to become warmer and drier during the twenty-first century. Mediterranean Sea response to climate change could be modulated by the choice of the socio-economic scenario as well as the choice of the boundary conditions mainly the Atlantic hydrography, the river runoff and the atmospheric fluxes. To assess and quantify the sensitivity of the Mediterranean Sea to the twenty-first century climate change, a set of numerical experiments was carried out with the regional ocean model NEMOMED8 set up for the Mediterranean Sea. The model is forced by air-sea fluxes derived from the regional climate model ARPEGE-Climate at a 50-km horizontal resolution. Historical simulations representing the climate of the period 1961-2000 were run to obtain a reference state. From this baseline, various sensitivity experiments were performed for the period 2001-2099, following different socio-economic scenarios based on the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. For the A2 scenario, the main three boundary forcings (river runoff, near-Atlantic water hydrography and air-sea fluxes) were changed one by one to better identify the role of each forcing in the way the ocean responds to climate change. In two additional simulations (A1B, B1), the scenario is changed, allowing to quantify the socio-economic uncertainty. Our 6-member scenario simulations display a warming and saltening of the Mediterranean. For the 2070-2099 period compared to 1961-1990, the sea surface temperature anomalies range from +1.73 to +2.97 A degrees C and the SSS anomalies spread from +0.48 to +0.89. In most of the cases, we found that the future Mediterranean thermohaline circulation (MTHC) tends to reach a situation similar to the eastern Mediterranean Transient. However, this response is varying depending on the chosen boundary conditions and socio-economic scenarios. Our numerical experiments suggest that the choice of the near-Atlantic surface water evolution, which is very uncertain in General Circulation Models, has the largest impact on the evolution of the Mediterranean water masses, followed by the choice of the socio-economic scenario. The choice of river runoff and atmospheric forcing both have a smaller impact. The state of the MTHC during the historical period is found to have a large influence on the transfer of surface anomalies toward depth. Besides, subsurface currents are substantially modified in the Ionian Sea and the Balearic region. Finally, the response of thermosteric sea level ranges from +34 to +49 cm (2070-2099 vs. 1961-1990), mainly depending on the Atlantic forcing.